All Posts – Page 333
On whether you have a right to sex
There are some things that you deserve in virtue of the fact that you fulfil a set of criteria: get all the answers right in this test, you deserve an A. Spend fifty quid at a nice restaurant, you deserve a decent meal in exchange for your money.
There are certain things that you deserve simply for being alive, and human: the right to liberty, equality before the law, a certain level of privacy, etc.
Into which of these categories does sex fit? Is it something you have a human right to, like justice, or is it something that you deserve if you have done certain things to earn it?
The right to sex
If you answered ‘neither’ then you are correct. The problem is that while on the surface most decent people can see why sex is not a human right – it’s blindingly obvious that you don’t ‘deserve’ sex just because you are a living human who wants it – there are many people who feel like it falls into the first category – that if you do X, Y and Z you somehow deserve to get laid. Someone withholding your justly earned sex is like a teacher withholding an A, even though you got all of the answers right.
Something awful happened recently that caused a few things to fall into place in my head. I’ve long had a sense of creeping dread about pick-up artists, Nice Guys, and a whole host of other things that I want to put under the blanket label ‘misogynist’. They make me uncomfortable, not just because they are misogynist, but because they have a skewed and unusual view on sex that I’ve struggled to put into words.
You’ll probably have seen the recent news that a young guy went on a shooting rampage after having pledged to punish women for not sleeping with him. Please read the story if you haven’t already, but here’s a quote from the shooter:
“College is the time when everyone experiences those things such as sex and fun and pleasure, but in those years I’ve had to rot in loneliness, it’s not fair … I don’t know why you girls aren’t attracted to me but I will punish you all for it.”
Yes, it’s misogynist. But there’s a very particular type of misogyny that this represents, and I feel like it is becoming more common. There’s an old-school prudish misogyny that is often the preserve of darkly religious types: a fear of women with their soft bodies and their Eve-like temptation, who will compel men to sin because we’re wicked and evil and beautiful and charming. There are a million and one reasons why that type of misogyny is terrifying and awful. I think this type of misogyny is different, though. No less terrifying, but different. And I want to explain why.
First category misogyny
What makes the shooter – and many other pick-up artists/men’s rights type people – stand out from the old-school, ‘fear of women’ misogynists, is the fact that he doesn’t hate women because they might tempt him into sex, he hates women because he thinks he deserves to have sex with them.
Many people have expressed a worry that he is looking on sex as something in category two – an absolute right. Equally you could read some of his chilling pronouncements on women and think he sees sex as a category one thing – something that, if he follows a certain set of rules, should be handed to him on a plate. Like an A grade. Like a decent meal. Like something he has earned.
The problem is, of course, that sex is not a right at all – earned or absolute. It isn’t like an A grade. No matter how hard you work, what rules you follow, or how desperately you want it, you are never entitled to sex.
The right to refuse
The obvious reason is clear: you never have a right to sex (absolute or earned) because there’s a much more important human right that trumps it: the right to bodily autonomy. You would only be able to exercise any ‘right’ to sex if you removed someone else’s right to refuse it. That’s not going to happen, and naturally no decent person would ever want it to. Your rights can never come at the expense of someone else’s.
Hence why it’s obvious that sex never falls into category two – it’s not a human right.
Necessary versus sufficient
The slightly less obvious point, that seems to be made less frequently, is that sex cannot possibly fall into category one (earned rights), because there are no conditions you could ever fulfil that would be sufficient to ‘earn’ you some sex. We know that there are certain things that are necessary in order to have sex, but we often confuse the difference between ‘necessary’ and ‘sufficient’. Necessary conditions: things you absolutely have to do in order to put yourself in the running for something. Sufficient: something that – on its own – is enough to guarantee you that thing. The difference between ‘necessary’ and ‘sufficient’ conditions is vital, often confused, and frequently ignored.
Let’s go back to the A grade again. In order to get it you need to write all the correct answers. That’s a necessary condition. But it’s not sufficient – if you write down all of the correct answers but don’t hand your paper in on time, you no more deserve the A than you deserve to fly to the moon.
The problem with a lot of the discourse around sex is that many many people confuse necessary and sufficient conditions – they know that they should treat someone nicely if they want to have sex with them, then they make the erroneous leap of assuming that because they’ve been nice they have somehow earned the sex.
That’s the key difference between sex and an A grade: although there absolutely is a set of necessary conditions, you can fulfil every single one of them and it can still not be sufficient.
It’s not just the bad guys
The reason I’m writing this, rather than any other blog, today is because I wanted to pin down the problem beyond just my general rage and discomfort. I could talk about misogynist extremism, and how it’s wrong for men to think they are ‘entitled’ to sex. I could rage out about the prevalence of men who hate women and the easy excuses we try to give them when what they’re saying is awful and unforgivable. But the vast majority of men would respond with “so what? I don’t feel like I’m entitled to anything. I’m not like those other guys.”
And sure, most men aren’t going to shoot women because of an openly-held belief that they have a right to women’s bodies. But many people do make the mistake of assuming that – if you have fulfilled a certain set of necessary conditions, then that in itself is sufficient to have earned some sex. It’s incredibly apparent in so much of our discourse, and being able to formulate exactly why it’s wrong (beyond the statement ‘it’s hateful’) means we can apply it to broader scenarios, and explain to people exactly what it is about their attitude towards sex that needs to change. Most people don’t relate to the bad guys, but most people are influenced by these common mistaken beliefs.
Whether it’s problem pages that tell you how to ‘get’ your partner to fulfil your fantasies, pick-up artists (or agony aunts/uncles) that tell you a certain set of rules will guarantee you get laid, or telling someone that their partner is being unfair when they don’t do a particular thing: we talk like this a lot. And we need to stop.
If you think you have never been guilty of these assumptions, think again. While considering examples for this blog post, I came up with a fair few times when people I know and like have been guilty of this error one point or another. In fact, I am sure that I have – when sympathising with friends who have been recently rejected by someone they’ve tried really hard to impress, for instance. I’ve probably done it here occasionally too – while I will never tell you that you deserve sex from someone, I do sometimes offer advice on how to encourage someone to fulfil your fantasies without adding that extra caveat: ‘you can try this, but you might still fail, because no one is ever obliged to do what you want.’
So no, men aren’t all buying guns and getting ready to shoot women: but it’s not really helpful to state that as a response to this particular incident. A more complicated and urgent truth is that we often discuss sex as if it’s an earned right, that you achieve by fulfilling a set of conditions. And while you do need to fulfil certain conditions in order to have sex with someone, assuming these conditions are sufficient as well as necessary is incredibly dangerous.
We’re not all picking up guns, but many of us are discussing sex as if it’s a just reward for hard work. An earned right. An A grade.
On hot BDSM beating: cane, belt, flogger… which tool is best?
Those who enjoy a good BDSM beating understand that there’s a hierarchy of stinging pain. To those who aren’t into it, a general aversion to being whacked by your partner in the throes of passion probably extends to all the different forms of whacking: belt, cane, hand, crop, paddle. If it hurts and you don’t like it, you probably don’t want to think about which exact method you dislike the least.
On celebrity crushes (part 2: crushing on porn performers)
Given my apparent inability to meet celebrity crushes and speak to them like a normal human being, I have made a quite concerted effort not to meet my heroes. At events where interesting science-minded people give talks that make me fall in love with their knowledge, I’ve usually steered clear of them at the post-talk drinks, run away if I see my friends with them, and all but hidden in the toilet if I bump into one.
Someone else’s story: whether dick size matters
On the list of ‘top 10 emails most likely to grab my attention’, shortly behind ‘free gin’ is the email that says ‘would you like a guest blog about cock?’
This week’s guest blogger is Rose Tinted Glasses – someone whose writing I have admired for a very long time. He writes witty, charming, filthy stories and has a way with words that makes me wish I was sitting in the pub sharing these things with him.
He emailed me to offer a guest blog about dick – specifically on the age-old question ‘does dick size matter?’ I’ve always wanted to get a guest blog on this topic from someone who has a penis of their own. If I had one I’d be too busy masturbating and weeing patterns on concrete patio slabs, but he has kindly taken time out from penis-based fun to give us a filthy and insightful view on size, and everything that goes with it.
Does dick size matter?
I am old enough to have not had the Internet around when I discovered porn. Like most British boys back then I first saw porn in magazines, dumped in hedgerows in the countryside. A cliché, but like most clichés, it was borne of some truth. That really did used to happen. Walking along a country lane you think ‘what’s that in the undergrowth?’ and when you have a look, you have hit paydirt. A glossy, filthy magazine – thrown away by someone who did not want to be caught with it at home. Word would spread around the village, ‘There’s a jazz mag out by the path along the main road’ or wherever.
I remember one summer holiday afternoon a mate asking whether I wanted to check out the one he’d found that week. Of course I did. So we rode out on our bikes, left them at the top of an embankment just off the road, and scrambled down the grassy bank to a path at the bottom. There was a hedgerow and, sure enough, a porn magazine hidden in the undergrowth. We crouched down and flicked through the pages. “I’m gonna have a wank.” announced my friend, then added “If I wank like this more often, will my dick get to be as big as yours?”
I hadn’t got a clue. I told him I didn’t know. That was the first time I was really aware that cocks come in different sizes.
I’m in my mid-thirties and I am, generally, pretty secure in myself – in my sexual preferences, my likes and dislikes, and definitely comfortable with my cock. I’m happy with being me. It’s not enormous. I’m not a porn star with a huge dong. It’s bigger than average, but not so large as to be a ‘big deal’. I have learned, for certain, that size isn’t good or bad. It’s just what it is. There is no such thing as ‘too small’ or ‘too big’. No such thing as ‘too curved’ or ‘the wrong shape’. People either fit together well or they don’t – and whatever your cock is like, there are people out there who it will work perfectly for. So perfectly they will be screaming your name and begging you to put it back inside them.
Our self-image is governed by the reactions and comments of others. Their perceptions are filtered through their own past experiences. It’s circular. Whilst sort-of-dating (but really more like sort-of-shagging-regularly) two girlfriends in our first year of university, one of them would tell me often how I was the biggest she had ever had, how much she loved it and how much it hurt, just a little, in that good way, when I was inside her. The other girl said quite the opposite. That my cock was ‘nice but not all that big’. Then again, she was able to swallow me all the way to the base of my shaft, so I took her at her word. A cynic might have thought that the former of the girls was lying to flatter me. I didn’t. I thought that they had just had very different past experiences.
My ex-wife was more experienced than I was, when we first met. She had been around. I mean that as a compliment – I admire a little experience and an open mind. She never complimented my cock, at all. She simply wasn’t impressed. We had talked about it, I forget why … and she just said that she’d had much bigger in the past. And it had hurt, to the point where it was unpleasant. Size really isn’t everything, guys.
Widening my sexual horizons over the years meant that I developed a bit more perspective on the size of my cock. You learn a lot about other guys’ dicks when you start enjoying threesomes, group sex, or going along to swingers clubs. Even more so when you get stuck in and play with some of the guys as well as the girls.
For example … there was a couple I had met at a swingers club. Only chatting, before everybody split off towards the bedrooms later on. They were friendly, and we stayed in touch online. The husband emailed me a few weeks later, saying that it was his wife’s birthday at the weekend and he wanted to give her a treat. Would I be up for calling round, along with as many other guys as he could round up, to gangbang his wife? I had no idea people actually used that word in the real world. Gangbang. It sounded like something you should only ever use in comedies. I am a sucker for new experiences though, so I said yes.
I followed the husband’s directions out to leafy suburbia on a quiet Sunday afternoon and knocked on the door. He answered, said hi, we shook hands, and he led me inside and straight up the stairs. “We’ve got ten guys, including you. More might turn up. I have to keep pulling these trousers back on to answer the door …” He pointed me through the upstairs rooms when we reached the landing. “That’s the bedroom, the bathroom, and the spare. If you can take off all your clothes in the spare room and just pile them up somewhere, then come through … I’ll see you in a minute.”
Now, I had been to sex parties before, but ten guys and one girl was a different matter entirely. Walking into a room full of strangers, naked, is an unnerving experience. We were all completely nude. Guys of all sizes and ages, standing around the perimeter of the bedroom. The husband had slipped out of his trousers, but still had a T-shirt on. He was the only one. His wife was kneeling in the middle of the bed, in the centre of the room. She was wearing a black lingerie set – nothing fancy, but nice. She was giggling and grinning from ear to ear. This felt weird, but not at all unsafe. Her obvious glee put me at ease. Nothing bad was likely to happen here. The husband laid out some ground rules. Sensible stuff. Condoms for penetration and if any of you are bisexual, please don’t freak out the straight guys in the room – this is just about giving her a treat, not you.
“Come on then.” said the wife. “Give me some cocks.” She reached to her left, for the nearest guy, and took his cock in her hand. He was halfway hard and she slowly stroked him all the way, then leaned over and took him in her mouth. A couple of the guys on the opposite side of the bed sort of looked at each other and shrugged, before climbing on to the bed. One positioned himself beside her and guided her spare hand to his crotch, the other knelt on the pillows at the top of the bed and gave her a slap on the arse cheek. She let the first guy’s cock go and giggled again. “Good start. Come on, the rest of you.”
I’m not here to tell you how that afternoon progressed in filthy detail (that is what my own blog is for), but it is a good way to talk about variety. We went from awkwardly standing around in various degrees of arousal to being a room full of hard cocks taking turns, anything up to five at a time, with the wife. When not joining in, most of us were standing beside, watching and wanking. There were guys with small cocks. Guys with circumcised and uncircumcised cocks. Guys with straight cocks, curved cocks, and even a couple of guys who couldn’t get it up. There was one guy with an enormous cock. Probably the biggest I have ever seen in the flesh. Long, thick, and kept rock-solid with a steel cock ring. He was taking poppers as well, which nobody else in the room wanted to join in with, despite his generous offers. At one point he was sliding his fingers into the girl’s cunt whilst I was fucking her – reaching between my legs with my balls slapping off his wrist and pushing two fingers in alongside my dick. I was thankful it was his fingers and not that massive cock.
I did learn something from that afternoon. (Aside from the welcome knowledge that being surrounded by other men didn’t stop me from performing, as it were.) I realised that despite the huge variation in cock size, and body shape … that girl was just as happy with every single one of us. She just wanted cock. She did not care if you had a big one or a small one. They were all good. (Which sounds like a certain Girl On The Net we all know and love.) And she was right. I have gone down on guys in my time. I don’t care if yours is smaller than mine, it’s still going to feel hot as hell wrapping my lips around it and making you come.
Did you enjoy that as much as I did? Then please do visit his excellent blog – Rose Tinted Glasses – and follow him on Twitter. I agree with most of what he says, although I have to take exception on the phrase ‘gang bang‘ (it is one of my favourites). But on dicks? They’re beautiful – long, short, fat, thin, curved in any direction: there’s more variety than Heinz. Ironically, one of the few areas in which men tend not to differ is in their attitudes towards their own dick – firstly that they worry about it, and secondly that they rarely ever need to.
On questions I have asked my boyfriend
We all know that communicating about sex is vital. Whether it’s sending a hot email with your filthy plans for the evening, or asking your partner just how hard they want to be spanked, sex cannot possibly be fun unless you know which bits the other person likes.
And yet for some reason people laugh when I ask the burning questions.
Are you sad that you can’t fit your whole fist in me?
Is it nice if I keep sucking for a bit after you’ve come?
Do the ‘blow-job-imitating cock sheaths actually feel like a blow job?
For some reason I am known as one who irritates – even pesters – gentlemen I fuck about the deep details of their opinions on anything to do with sex.
What’s the best porn you’ve ever seen?
Have you ever warmed up a melon and then fucked it?
Or their bodies…
When you hold your dick to stop yourself pissing, does the semi mean you stop needing to go, or just that you can’t go?
Do you like the taste of your own spunk?
Can you tell the difference between this [wanks off with right hand] and this [wanks off with left hand]?
The truth is that, while a lot of these questions are there because I’m just tingling with curiosity…
Is it more fun to jizz loads in volume, or to jizz with force and power?
What’s better: coming inside me or coming on my tits?
Many of them are there because the very act of him answering turns me on. Watching his eyes glaze over as he considers the implications – the details – of each question I ask makes my blood run hot and my mind run into overdrive.
If I rub my cunt on your feet while I’m sucking you, does that put you off your own orgasm?
When we first got together, did you used to wank about me?
Do you still wank about me?
As I ask about it, I like to think about him doing it. And I know that while he may not share my fantasies, he’s more than happy to play along with them for a few minutes – to give me that delicious sense of sexual hope that comes from his temporary uncertainty about the answer.
Would you suck another dude off and let me watch?
Do you prefer to come on my tits or my arse?
What’s the most wanks you have ever had in a day?
And I know it can sometimes be trying…
No, but hypothetically, if you were going to suck another dude off and let me watch, which dude would you pick?
Or clumsy…
If you could get a hand job from anyone, would you rather someone with huge hands so they could envelop your cock, or tiny hands to make your cock look massive?
Or downright bizarre…
If we were having sex, and I turned into a zombie halfway through, would you keep going?
But I love asking questions – I love it. I love that despite the oddness of my pillow-talk investigations, he takes this shit seriously. No matter what I ask. Whether it’s weird hypotheticals…
Any kind of sex you want with just one person, or only blow jobs forever but from as many people as you like?
Would you rather never wank again but get shagged once a month, or never shag again but can wank as often as you like?
If I transported you back in time, blindfolded, to different sexual encounters, could you tell who you were fucking just based on the shape and feel of their cunt round your dick?
Ridiculous scenarios…
If you saw me in an Amsterdam window, how much would you pay for a shag?
What’s five Euros in British money?
Tittilating possibilities…
What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever shoved up your arse?
Which of these x-rated Tumblr gifs is your favourite?
Tentative suggestions…
Your opinion on spunk bubbles?
Could you come just from me doing… this? [does ‘this’]
Or genuine concerns…
Do I taste different at different times of the month?
Have you ever woken up when I’ve been wanking next to you in bed?
I love the questions – I love the chat. From the sublime, through the terrifying, to the so-ridiculous-he-can-barely-give-an-answer. Because it’s not the questions themselves that matter – it’s the fact that I’m asking them. That I’m saying “hey, I’m really interested in this. I’m interested in you. Now please tell me everything you can about your penis.”
I know it gets irritating sometimes, and when it’s late at night and we’re lying in bed, and I have his dick in my hand, often the last thing he wants to do is engage in a surreal sexual game show.
Pizza or buttsex? Blowjobs or throatfucks? Nancy Botwin or Danaerys Targaryen?
But he answers. Because he knows that the best way to give me a window into his desires is to give me the rapid-fire answers to sexual questions. If you asked me what I like sexually I could write two thousand words that passably reflect what goes on in my head: the thrusting, aching, wet desire that covers all the things I truly love. He, on the other hand, would sit in front of a blank page for half an hour and eventually scrawl “tits” before throwing it into the bin. But neither of us would come close to really nailing the nuanced and subtle things that push us into arousal.
He answers my questions because the answers paint the picture that neither of us can fully do with words. Because alongside zombies, time-travel, spunk-force and Amsterdam windows, what I’m actually asking is:
What do you like?
And that’s my favourite question of all.